In the field of sheet material handling, it is important to not damage sheet material as it is being handled. Besides obvious sheet material damaging, such as dog-ears, curls, or the like, a serious, but less obvious problem concerns toner smearing. Typically, sheet material will be fed a short time after it has been printed on and therefore the toner will not be completely set on the sheet material and may smudge if contacted. Smudging can even occur on set toner. Furthermore, in sheet material collecting or accumulating applications, after the sheet material is collected or accumulated into a stack, in the prior art, the sheet material stack has been fed out of the collector/accumulator area by either a lugged belt or clamping the upper and lower surfaces of the sheet material stack between a non-lugged belt and an idler roller or belt.
A problem faced by these prior art solutions concerns the fact that the sheet material contacting surfaces of belts and rollers, which are typically made of rubber, must have a high coefficient of friction so that they can grip and move the sheet material stack. Accordingly, as the belts and rollers accelerate, de-accelerate, or merely come into any type of relative movement with the sheet material, the tendency will be to smear toner. As will be appreciated by those of skill in the art, this smearing is unacceptable.
Accordingly, there is room for improvement within the art of sheet material handling and collecting.